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From:
Adam Piontek
To:
Date:
Tue, 15 May 2001 11:08:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:
RE: [idm] re: art & expression
Msg-Id:
<20010515180859.21449.qmail@web13803.mail.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To:
<NDBBLAHOCLHEDGBBCKIKAENCCKAA.vzaem@humbledesign.com>
Mbox:
idm.0105.gz
--- Myroslaw Bytz <vzaem@humbledesign.com> wrote:
quoted 6 lines thanks for the discussion, by the way, i had a good> > thanks for the discussion, by the way, i had a good > time, and had my mind > opened a bit more to the tiny complexities that are > a part of the > discussion.
Uh-uh. I'm not going to let you be all mature and back out - this ain't over! :P Because I have one more very important thought: "Art" is a real thing. It's not just a term you can deny. It seems like people think there are all these different kinds of creative expression, and then there's this subset called "art." That's just not quite true. Human expression is divisible into two types: the things we do for survival, and everything else. The "everything else" is art. The survival stuff is farming, math, engineering, whatever you do to insure your share of the food, shelter, and bit o' tail you need. Just because you don't like your creativity being called art does not mean it is not art. It is. Get over it. The other guy got it right - what seems to be bothering you is the way some people behave towards art. The putting it up on a pedestal or on a wall. If that's not your thing, that's fine, but some people like it. Sometimes it's nice to take a prolonged look at something and try to see different things in it. Sometimes it's nice to try to create something that will impart a message. Art on walls (or on stages or screens or on CDs) is sometimes like a little puzzle. On the other hand, I was walking to the library today and saw that a museum here in the city is having a big ol' display of folk art. Something rubbed me wrong about that: folk art, particularly the stuff from long-dead cultures, is kind of like an archeological artifact. It wasn't meant to be put into a museum; it meant something immediate and cultural to the people who made it. Particularly if it's a religious talisman (for example) and you believe that without it your god is going to deny you water from the skies. That falls under "expression for survival" and was therefore not art at the time. However, despite my misgivings, the folk art display is still going to go on. Why? Because it's art to us now. It's historical and tells us things about ourselves. We can even appreciate old religious talismans on a level of the art of craftsmanship. When you get right down to it, you can't deny the fact that art exists, unless you have a narrower understanding of what it is, and you can't argue against how others behave towards art because it doesn't really reflect anything more important than their subjective tastes, just as you feel that yellow squares or garth brooks might not be your "cup of tea." In the end, it just don't matter, so stop worrying about it. If looking at Monet or Basqiat on a wall is one person's cup of tea, good for them! How dare you try to deny what they are getting out of that experience, and how dare you suggest that the you know anything about the motivations or compromise status of the artists. We all do what we do for our own reasons, and only we know if we've failed ourselves. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org